Fonds MsC-26 - Warren Tallman fonds

Warren Tallman (7 November 1921 - 1 July 1994) was an American-born poetry professor who inspired the Canadian Tish movement and influenced the mid-20th century poetry scene in Canada. Born in Seattle attended the University of California, Berkeley on the G.I. Bill. There he met Ellen King; they married in 1951. In 1956, the Tallmans accepted teaching jobs in the English department at the University of British Columbia, where they helped Earle Birney and Roy Daniells to organize the creative writing department. In 1963, they hosted a poetry conference attended by Denise Levertov, Charles Olson, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Duncan, Margaret Avison, and Philip Whalen. The Tallman home itself also served as a poetry enclave of sorts. It was there that Jack Spicer gave some of his now legendary lectures. Two years later, they held another poetry conference in Berkeley, California. Sometimes criticized by Canadian literary nationalists for turning the Vancouver poetry circle into a California branch plant, Tallman embraced the Black Mountain school approach to poetry, and also was influenced from the Beats and other New American Poets.